


like marigolds pruned into lavender

by Elisye



Series: mayflower | cosmos [3]
Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: --that is not actually what the fic is about tho, Gen, dial the void for help with your procrastination, the real plot is 'tfw your fl oc is nephilim oh boy how'd the lore work with that'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 02:26:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10427094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisye/pseuds/Elisye
Summary: 'forged in error by one and many at the pinnacle of existence, We who have no eyes in exchange for endless sight - you, born into formation, are of creations who mustn't exist.indeed, lower than what has already been designed.'(or: The Grounded Occultist returns home for a family reunion, deems it bullshit, and goes back in ten minutes. A typical vacation, really.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> cross-post from my tumblr lmaooo

“How could I ever forget?”

(you never did forget, actually.)

the sunshine is unbearable, you think, after a pretend-millennia of the neath. the sunshine is glorious, if only because the Judgments are a transcendent existence - there is a silver thread, a sub-dreaming heartbeat, dancing and singing into the fabric of all matter, but here it is gold instead of silver and dead instead of dreaming. in other words, the Chain is different in this iteration, but nonetheless so very close.

“Rather, how could I not remember?” 

you bare your teeth out to an earthly wilderness. it makes no difference if this was heaven or hell, honestly.

your eyes are alight with knowledge. your eyes settle on the ruined building, dappled with surface light. not that the detail ought to matter. this is an iteration of a different Chain, you must remember. you must remember. you must breathe and sigh and recollect, and take absent notice of the basics. you must remember. but, haha, here’s the thing - this isn’t a very important thing to truly remember now, so you know. it’s a lie. the whole thing.

your smile is too small for your face, so you pull it wider. a grin is so comfortable. it’s believable.

(like gods? like God? like a god? like—)

absently, you trace your steps. your boots are quite worn out - the seams tying the leather together are so clearly fraying. it takes a sunny clarity to really notice these sort of things, doesn’t it? you keep a bark of laughter to yourself, because it doesn’t make sense in this context. the echo of footsteps is something to listen to, and something to die to.

They turn to you. “It seems you have gone beyond what anyone would desire of you.”

“Marvelously, right?”

They just cock an eyebrow at you.

“…Amazingly, too.”

They aren’t impressed.

that deserves a laugh. so you do - loud and hearty and empty and heavy and dead dead dead!!

it’s so funny!

it’s so—atrocious.

the clock springs to twelve. midnight. a soft tick, a far too sharp snap. the sunlight wavers with the sweet caress of a spring breeze. your grin falls back to a smile, you tilt your head, you look - if not glare, like sunlight on a mirror - at this heartless abomination in front of you.

“What have you called me back here for?”

“To keep you in your place.” They sigh. Their audacity! “We find it utterly disgraceful that you have abused your heritage to assume a role far higher than you truly ought to hold.”

“We have nothing to begin with.” a sneer. “Anything multiplied by zero is zero, isn’t it?”

“That sense of logic has no application here, and you are aware of it.”

“I certainly do.” 

but that won’t stop you from trying to exist. and your heavenly, far too bright aunt knows that too.

this conversation is clearly over - not because the ship has faltered to its destination. oh no, the sails have folded, the wood falling asleep to the shallow waves. the docks are dark and quiet today, without any silver paint from the moon. the end has been reached, quaintly so. stubbornly so.

you immediately turn on your heel. it is time to bid farewell to your home - to an iteration where you and your lot are so low in the ranks, so so so low, that your flesh is worth less than genuine garbage, than non-existence itself. what a short return it was, what a nostalgic return it was. the sewn helms of the pathways are crying, bitterly but without a voice.

like a menace, like your soul being its usual self, you take one deep breath.

exhale.

“Be so wonderfully reassured, nonetheless - how could I ever forget that we, beings lower than designed, should stop existing?”

you hum, one foot already reaching back into the neath.

“—Well, I certainly never asked to exist. But I’m still here. And the fact that the universe itself hasn’t collapsed its own laws to kill me must mean something too. Do you get what I mean, at least?”

“…You will simply do as you like, for as long as you exist to do as you like.”

“That… is wrong. Partly.”

you sigh. you fix yourself. you fix your heart. nothing is truly fixed, but, there it is—

the sunshine is unbearable, glorious, bright - and passive, you think, with the sourness of licorice and a soft wish like happiness. a step, a skip, into the pathways. the stars are unfathomable, for an instant—and a silvery, dreaming Chain welcomes your shadow with a grave hesitance. that is a sensible response. you are someone who can tame the wilderness abundant here, someone who can mingle with the frolicking coppery-iron links descending in spiral formation. almost tantalizingly so, the order of the cosmos is as simple and as irrelevant as a chessboard from the meta-perspective. rules? here, you need no mastery. you can just _destroy it all,_ if you were to become just that bored, Revolutionaries unneeded.

but still. but still. a small, small voice. a whisper so quiet, you feel dead again - you are still someone so, so, _so_  very below them all.

(but if the Judgments even spit out a single syllable of the fact, you will graciously make them watch what it’s like to see a sky covered by light pollution. what a fun thought!)


End file.
